title: Minimal residual disease detected prior to hematopoietic cell transplantation.
abstract: Previous studies to evaluate minimal disease in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) after treatment have relied on the diagnostic specimen to develop patient-specific analytical probes. The diagnostic specimen is often not available in a tertiary setting; therefore, we evaluated the use of flow cytometry (FCM) using a "difference from normal" approach to detect residual disease prior to myeloablative allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). Among 116 pediatric patients with ALL who were in morphological remission at time of transplant, we found that those patients who had detectable residual disease by FCM prior to HCT experienced significantly inferior outcome.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Texas Children's Cancer Center/Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Foster
authors.forename: Douglas S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Hawkins
authors.forename: Michael R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Loken
authors.forename: Denise A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Wells
authors.forename: Blythe
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Thomson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D018572:Disease-Free Survival; D005260:Female; D018380:Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D018365:Neoplasm, Residual; D054198:Precursor Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality* / Q000628:therapy*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D015996:Survival Rate; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous